Online Desk: BNP Vice Chairman Major (retd) Hafiz Uddin Ahmed on Thursday said the great war of independence in 1971 was to establish democratic rights.

“But today there is no democracy… no basic rights, freedom of speech and the press. Bangladesh has been turned into a police state,” he said.

He said this after attending a meeting of a BNP committee formed for the upcoming Independence Day celebration.

Major (retd) Hafiz said the ruling Awami League (AL) does not want to give any credit to those who fought against the Pakistan army in the battlefield. The political party had contributions; they had the right to hold state power as they won the election. But the Pakistani military rulers did not respect the democratic mandate.

The BNP leader said, AL thinks that the independence of Bangladesh had been achieved by the political party alone, denying contributions of the masses including students, youths, workers, farmers and soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice.

Seven crore people in the country at the time unitedly participated in the war. But the ruling party is trying to project the Liberation War as a “political party’s war”.

Zia’s declaration of independence motivated people from every corner to join the Liberation War, but today, AL portrays him as an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), he claimed.

The BNP vice chairman said that AL is distorting the history of the Liberation War. “During the war, the number of freedom fighters was 80,000-100,000, but today we’re seeing about 250,000 getting allowance along with other benefits as freedom fighters,” he said.